


ain't never had no one

by silverxrain



Series: the spider and the elephant [2]
Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Gen, Natasha has feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-31
Updated: 2015-05-31
Packaged: 2018-04-02 03:44:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,217
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4044607
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/silverxrain/pseuds/silverxrain
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Natasha didn't lose anyone because she never had anyone. she started out with nothing, and it's time to decide if she wants more of the same</p>
            </blockquote>





	ain't never had no one

So maybe this is a good idea.

Natasha practices thinking about her feelings. It’s something she’s done ever since Clint taught her a little more about the inside of an average person’s head. No, _more_ isn’t correct, Natasha already knew _more_ , no. Clint taught her a different way to look at the inside of a normal person’s head. Look at the way they think, they laugh and dream and build castles in the air in their minds, look at the stars in their eyes. Okay, so maybe she’s romanticizing it. Clint wouldn’t have romanticized it. But it’s a privilege to look at things in a nice way, in a good guy way, so that’s what Natasha does. Look at people dreaming of things and wanting things inside their heads. A part of being human is feeling like that. So Natasha practices, (that’s how you get better at things, right?). Most days, when she has time, Natasha evaluates words, events, overheard conversation, not for strategic purposes but simply to process how they made her _feel_. (It is for strategic purpose. Everything Natasha does is strategic. But that’s not always a bad thing, she learned from Clint).

So Natasha thinks about Steve, talking about Bucky. And how she felt.

She matches up Steve, dirty, defeated and exhausted, sick, with the fight gone out of him, saying, “Even when I had nothing, I had Bucky.” Strategically, Natasha had observed how ‘Bucky’ had drained him. How the fiery determination was put out like a light in the face of this… weakness. Bucky, the Winter Soldier is a weakness of Steve’s. Natasha’s mental programming doesn’t provide her with any other way to put it. The Winter Soldier is clearly a weakness of Steve’s, (old friend, lost loved one, regret, the one you can’t save). So this is a new part of the mission. How Steve will handle this, put on the list of things to worry about right after ‘how the hell do we get out of this van?’. Maria Hill fixes this one for her. Natasha does get shot, but she’s still appreciative. It’s not often she gets her chores done for her. And that one might have been tricky to get out of.

Steve’s weakness is shunted further lower on her list, when she is told Fury is alive, and he hadn’t trusted any of them, not even her (one of my best, that’s what you are, Romanoff, take this mission, you’re the only one who can play Stark, come with me, Natasha, you know what, I’m glad Barton made his different call, you’re my right hand, Romanoff) Fury hadn’t trusted her to tell him he was alive. Natasha was suddenly, viciously glad she hadn’t cried for him.

She thought about crushing the bitterness, but realized it was a human feeling, so she let it go up in a hot swell inside her for a moment, before it settled down again and Natasha was in full control of herself (not that she hadn’t been the whole time, Natasha was always in control, that was the part she hated most).

Natasha thinks about Steve’s weakness later, when they find him on the edge of the Potomac. It’s strongly suggestive that Steve’s ‘weakness’, the Winter Soldier, had dragged him out.

So love is a strength. Is that what she’s supposed to learn from this? Love can break through the barriers of time and the ravages of torture and brainwashing, and love can bring you back. 

For her? No, because there is no _back_ for her to come to. She was never beloved of another, she was never smiling and human, there is no before for the Widow like there was for the Soldier, no, Natasha was born aflame, and bloody. 

Natasha thinks about the word ‘touchstone’. She’s adding new words to her vocabulary every day, words that speak of sentiment, not of survival (although the two overlap more than she previously imagined). It’s another privilege she allows herself now, along with romanticizing things.

‘Touchstone’ is a type of stone, obviously. It’s also ‘the standard which something can be judged by’. Natasha knows because she just googled it on her phone.

So the connection here is that you have one thing, one thing you have always had, one other _person_ , who helps you define who you are. Bucky is… that, for Steve. Not a weakness, but a defining point. Steve has always had Bucky. Natasha’s read the stories. Steve tells her them firsthand, later, when he wakes up and the Winter Soldier is nothing but a memory and fading bruises on Steve’s arm where metal fingers pressed into skin to haul him out of the water.

“I broke his other arm,” Steve sobs, and Natasha doesn’t know where to look. “I broke his other arm. How did he swim? He was holding me,” and Natasha thanks God she doesn’t have to know yet about the scars love leaves on you, when it’s gone.

Natasha doesn’t know, and she thanks God reflexively, because all Americans do, whether they believe in anything or not. It’s just a language quirk.

Tony once asked her if there was anything real about her, and at the time, it didn’t cut even a bit, not like Tony intended it to. At that point, Natasha still didn’t care. But now she has the luxury of being human, and letting things hurt (she has to remind herself all the time that it’s okay to feel), and now Natasha wishes there was, not something real about her, but something that stayed the _same_. Some person, maybe. Natasha did not, and never would, have a Bucky. Any kind of touchstone. She’s pretty sure everyone she knew as a child is dead.

She almost laughs out loud. That’s ridiculous. That’s totally ridiculous. _Everyone_ from her childhood is dead? But then she stops and thinks about Steve. “All the guys in my barbershop quartet are dead,” maybe it’s not that ridiculous.

There is nothing from the beginning. Nothing has ever stayed with her for long. Clint was the longest, from then to now, and Fury, even though she thought he was over too, and the Avengers are still with her, and it’s been two years. Although she still thinks she’ll wake up and it will be gone, because Natasha can adapt to anything, but she can’t adapt to not having to adapt.

That’s ridiculous. Her life is ridiculous.

Clint is the longest someone has been with her. She asks his advice. “What do you think about me confiding in Bruce?” she says outright, treating her feelings and damaged psyche clinically, as if they’re physical wounds instead of mental anguish (it’s the only way she knows how).  

“Seriously?” Clint says, and shakes his head at her expression. “No, no, Banner’s probably not a bad idea, but you’re choosing to ask me this now?”

“Well why not?”

“We’re like thirty feet in the air.”

“Aren’t you always?”

“We’re upside _down_.”

“Good point. Also, whose idea was it that we practice sparring in zero-gravity conditions?”

“Stark. He’s also the one with the resources to create a zero-gravity environment, so he probably knows his stuff.” Clint shrugs. “Dunno, maybe we’re planning a space excursion?”

“I hope not,” says Natasha. “One Asgardian is quite enough.”

They get back to sparring.


End file.
